Transport for Quality of Life develops sustainable transport solutions

New research:

This new report presents evidence showing that deployment of a mixture of both revenue and capital investment produces the best results for sustainable transport and is most cost-effective(research commissioned by Department for Transport)

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Attractive alternatives to car use

Spatial planning that reduces the need for car travel in the first place

Promotion of smarter travel choices

These practices are essential to shift our transport patterns to lower carbon intensity - to stabilise the climate and to make our transport system robust to increasing oil scarcity.

The car is an ever-ready transport solution for an individual, but it is also a ‘social trap’: its unfettered use by many individuals leads to social and environmental degradation that no individual wants.

Clever planning and transport measures are needed to wean us away from our cars. Transport for Quality of Life is at the forefront of developing a body of evidence and experience that shows how it can be done.

Transport isn’t working. Lynn Sloman's book Car Sick shows why, and sets out clearly what the answers are. A must-read for everyone interested in transport.

Stephen Joseph, Executive Director, Campaign for Better Transport

Transport for Quality of Life is founded on ethical principles which underpin our choice of work and the way we undertake it.

Masterplanning Checklist
for Sustainable Transport in New Developments Ian Taylor and Lynn Sloman
Transport for Quality of Life
September 2008

Between now and the year 2020 it is intended that as many houses will be
built in England as were built in the whole of the Victorian era. This
represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create truly sustainable
communities, with low car use and high levels of walking, cycling and public
transport travel, equivalent to the best examples in continental Europe. If
this opportunity is grasped, we could significantly reduce our future carbon
footprint. Conversely, if we fail to design these new housing developments in a way
which makes walking, cycling and public transport travel easy and attractive,
and instead build new homes with ‘designed in’ car dependency, we will
increase carbon emissions from transport, and at the same time risk building
the slums of tomorrow. In a scenario of rising oil costs, places where jobs,
education, shops and leisure facilities are inaccessible without a car are liable
to become places people will not want to live. The urgent need for large cuts in carbon emissions and the prospect of a
continued rise in the price of fuel means that we should only be building
homes in which people can enjoy living while making minimal use of a car.
This is significantly different from the current approach, which is to build
non-car-dependent housing in places where it is easy to do so, but to
continue to build car-dependent dwellings elsewhere. Part A of this report examines the evidence on the different factors which
affect car use by residents of new developments, including: location, density,
land-use mix, street layout and design, public transport provision, parking,
car restraint, and the existence of smart travel behaviour change
programmes. Based on this evidence, it sets out a Sustainable Transport
Masterplanning Checklist (summarised in the table below) which can be used
as a practical guide by local authority councillors, planners and developers to
create new housing development which facilitates sustainable travel patterns.
It is also of practical relevance to policy-making at regional, sub-regional and
national levels. Certain aspects of the Sustainable Transport Masterplanning Checklist may
appear radical. It breaks away from the current consensus on what type of
housing development is acceptable. The implication is that we must develop
a totally different paradigm for twenty-first century housing, although it
might also be viewed as a return to an earlier paradigm represented by the
densely-built and highly sustainable urban form of housing in every century
up until the last one.

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